This morning, I woke up to a nice big cup of holy shit.
Yeah, I’m leaving the country tomorrow for four months.
Yeah, I’ve purchased my non-refundable, 2,071 dollar ticket.
Yeah, I packed my bags last night.
Yeah, I am literally ready in every way to set sail.
Yeah, we’re having a going away party for me this afternoon.
Oh yeah, except –
No, I do not yet have my utterly vital study permit, without which I can’t leave my own country, much less enter another. Wonderful. Awesome. Oh, it’s perfectly fine, no big deal.
It actually is the biggest deal of my life, and I realize this is a split second upon opening my morning dewed eyes. The realization pops me out of bed (and let it be known, I never pop in the morning).
My gluten-free, corn Chex cereal tastes staler than usual when I sprinkle it with three heavy packets of Worried (we’re out of Spenda apparently).
“Brooke, I just saw the mail lady. You better go check.” Jeanie’s voice sounds far too dramatic – the kind of uncharacteristic dramatic that I hate coming from her mouth. This shakes me up real bad; I can’t handle this kind of pressure. Hundreds of my dollars will be flushed away changing my flight if she doesn’t bring me my golden ticket! I’ll be late for school, which starts on July 15th! I can’t be that student! I can’t!
I check the mail around 10 a.m. Nothing.
After getting dressed and making my bed (I need at least some order in my life), I proceed to check the mail again, around 10:20 a.m. Nothing.
Flinging my arms in the air and throwing out expletives the situation demanded be thrown out, I stomped back into my house.
I grab my notebook, and make my way back outside. I check the mailbox again, around 10:23 a.m. Nothing.
Using weak-from-worry arms, I pull myself atop the mailbox and make myself comfortable on my perch. I open my notebook to write:
“I’m on top of the mailbox, waiting on my angel of relief or messenger of doom to bring me the mail. Tomorrow is my departure, and today I’m still lacking that essential VISA!!
So if she brings me doom, I’ll be heartbroken. I am so hopeful that I have neglected to concoct Plan B. I can only think to go straight to the Post Office and demand they look for my package. I’ll go on a wild hunt for it all day until I find it – across the country if necessary. I’m not joking.
But action is halted at all thresholds until some propellant stimulus shoves you forward or back. So I’m stuck in horrific waiting mode – the dreadfully silent – save for the ticking clock – white-walled room.
I HATE MY LIFE TODAY!!!
Dear gods and goddesses of mail, bring my passport home to me and you may have my soul forever.
I’ll cry. I’ll cry if it doesn’t come. I’ll cry all day because I’ll have to give some other person $200. And I am so poor it’s disgusting.
WHERE IS THE STUPID MAILMAN?!?!
Does she not know she’s carrying my life, and I need it immediately??! This is like waiting on a doctor’s verdict. My heart sinks with the passing of each slow and agonizing movement of the clock’s hands. That stupid woman has no idea that I’m DYING!!!!
I THINK I’LL GO LOOK FOR HER.”
So I do, you know. But first, I check the mailbox again, just to make sure she didn’t come when I blinked or something – I’m sure it’s possible. Nothing.
I get a bike 5 years too small for me from the garage, and I trek across the neighborhood in search of the mail lady, who is – of course – nowhere to be found. I see stupid little neighbors coming out of their stupid little houses and opening their mailboxes to find perfectly packaged letters and beautiful bills and whatnot – AND I HAVE NOTHING.
Those people who have mail have no idea – they have NO IDEA!!! – how lucky they are to have mail right now. I think about what a beautiful and wretched job being a mailman is. I think about how today she could be my hero or she could be my hated enemy. What a job – what pressure! But she chose this job! Doesn’t she want to be good at it?! Doesn’t she want to deliver mail to the people who need it most?! THAT’S ME TODAY! THAT’S ME!
I can’t find her. Maybe she beat me home. I check the mailbox again at around 10:33 a.m. Nothing.
I hate that woman more every minute. She sucks. She just plain old-fashioned sucks. She sucks at her job, she sucks at life, she just sucks, and I think briefly about calling her boss and telling him that she sucks.
But I have an appointment at eleven, and it’s all the way on the other side of town. So at 10:40 a.m. I check the mailbox again, but she still hasn’t come. And then I depart for coffee with Lisa.
On my way home, the phone rings – it’s Mother. Oh, God. This is it. This is the moment of truth. This is my fate in a phone call. I can’t handle it –
“Hello?!?” I’ve never answered the phone in such panic, in a voice so teeming with anxiety.
“Brooke!” Oh my God, her voice is stressed and frenzied – “Where are you?! I need your help!”
Oh, lord. She’s calling to tell me she needs my help? What – cutting tomatoes or something? And I have bigger things like the potential impossibility of tomorrow’s two-thousand dollar across-the-globe flight.
“Okay, Mother. I’m coming home now.”
Twenty minutes later she calls again. Please, God, please, God, please, God, please –
“Hello?!”
“IT CAME!!!!” Cheering erupts across the world – Times Square even stops in celebration of my receiving my beloved passport. CNN displays this beautiful news across a yellow banner – the anchors are chuckling their relief. Even Fox News anchors do the same, and I don’t even like Fox. South Africa explodes into giant cheers – I can hear them from here. Everything is happy again, everyone is thrilled. Life is good – I love it. It’s like a Coke commercial. My heart has resurrected from an almost dead state.
Twenty-two hours before my flight, and I just received my permit to go.
I’m on African time already.
It’s so un-American, and I love it.
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